Born in Surry County July 27, 1812, Thomas L. Clingman attended law school at UNC-Chapel Hill and served as a general in the Confederate Army. After being thrown from a horse and later shot in the leg, Clingman applied wet tobacco leaves to his injuries and discovered that this treatment lessened both the pain and swelling within a day. Clingman published a pamphlet in1885 titled â€œThe Tobacco Remedies â€“ The Greatest Medical Discovery.â€ Prominent Tar Heels including several doctors provided testimonials as to the efficacy and various cures that tobacco offered. Clingman later sold a tobacco leaf cake which could be taken apart and made into a poultice or ointment. Tobacco's healing properties were never definitive or fully accepted when Clingman died in 1897.

In 1821, Dr. James Smith, Vaccine Agent for the U.S. government, accidentally introduced smallpox to Edgecombe County, killing ten people. Smith accidentally sent the live virus instead of the vaccine to doctors in the area, leading to the repeal of a national vaccine law of 1813 that had permitted the vaccine to come to the county.

Beneath the waters of the Pasquotank River near Elizabeth City lie relics of sunken barges. Once common on the waterway, they were a major mover of commerce before the advent of trucking, railroads, and air travel. Allegood reports on the work of East Carolina University graduate students who are documenting the abandoned vessels. There are at least sixty barges, and they represent the most extensive collection of abandoned vessels found in North Carolina.

Utilizing empiricism as well as methods passed down from previous generations of Native American \"doctors,\" used a variety of techniques to cure illnesses. Sweathouses (bagnios), flagellation with rattlesnake teeth, moxabustion, inunctions with bear grease, deer tendons as sutures, use of ground up shells, and ingesting local plant life, are a few methods.

Doctors during the antebellum period dealt with illness despite a lack of general knowledge of disease and very few hospitals. Common antebellum diseases included dysentery, influenza, malaria, and small pox. Children were most susceptible to illness, for example the state reported 427 croup related deaths and 400 whooping cough fatalities. Those severely sick could not go to a hospital unless an individual's physician ran a private infirmary. Medical practices for the period relied on \"the 'four Ps' pukes, purges, plasters, and phlebotomy.\"

During the Civil War, the Confederate army was lacking for many provisions and services, none as dire as the lack of medical personnel and supplies. There were only 8,000 Confederate doctors and only two ambulances per regiment of 2,000 troops. Of the medical staff, many lacked formal training and were unprepared to treat gunshot wounds or trauma.

Fred Spielman, professor of anesthesiology at UNC Hospitals, has studied the progress of pain control in medicine and its depiction in art. Throughout history, art was used to document medical procedures and to convey how society viewed anesthetics. For Spielman, art has helped him become more emotional and compassionate with his patients.